Indianapolis Temple

This week Genevieve celebrated her 9-month birthday. That means only 3 months left until Christmas but that is beside the point. Turning 9 months means a visit to the doctor which is always fun because she gets to be weighed. The verdict at this visit- 21 1/2 pounds. This may not seem very big to some of you but to put that in our perspective, Lara is 23 pounds and is 2 1/2 years old.

Some of Vivi's nicknames- Chunky Monkey, Chubba Bubba, Hambo, Chubbalicious, and Chunkers. Most of these come from family who swear that, although spoken with the utmost adoration, as soon as Genevieve begins to understand what they're saying, they will stop calling her that :)

Other Vivi accomplishments-

1. Eating anything and everything and relishing every minute of it. Mealtimes consist of her screeching at the top of her lungs while I hurriedly dish food into her mouth or cut up something to put on her tray. I am never fast enough for her. Perhaps I will film her so that all of you will have the priviledge of hearing her pterydactl-like shrieks.

2. She already knows how to annoy Lara. Mostly by screaming. Lara absolutely hates it when Vivi screams so she will scream back at Vivi. When this happens, I hear the changes in Vivi's screams. They are no longer "I AM HUNGRY!". They become "WOW, THIS IS FUN! LET'S MAKE LARA SCREAM SOME MORE!" These exchanges usually happen in the car or while I'm on the phone.

3. Crawling and not being content with just that. She learned to crawl while at Myrtle Beach but, as soon as we got home, she began to pull herself up on anything. Chairs, couches, people, the wall, her crib, shelves, toys, bumbos, etc. She really wants to start cruising along these things but inevitably ends up on the ground. This week she has even let go a few times but has promptly fallen down. IMHO, subsequent children should always walk later than the previous. I fear that is not the case for Vivi.

4. Getting cuter and cuter every day. Need I say more on this subject?

I haven't taken as many pictures this month as I should have. So the most recent photo I have of Genevieve is this one taken at our ward camp-out. At least you can see her very kissable cheeks! Je l'aime! Ma belle Genevieve Noelle!

Lara was asking for crackers the other day and I knew which ones she wanted- the Simply Fit Crackers 7 Real Cheese. She likes to lick the top and then eat them. I prefer the Simply Fit Crackers Harvest Grain- mmmmmm, yummy. I love that they're sweet in a grainy way and crunchy. And, weirdly, I love the real seeds because I like to play with them in my mouth :). Both crackers contain 10 whole grains and seeds so much more flavorful than regular crackers.

For her 17th birthday, Valerie and a group of friends (including myself) went to the Columbus Zoo, and we had dinner at Wendys. Wow, Mormon teens are original... We had a great time!

Valerie didn't like me at that time. But I liked her a lot, and I tried to be at her side as much as I could, as evident in this photo.

I know that there are only 12 candles on this cake, but I promise she was older than that! I think that we actually made the candles count as 2 each.

This, unfortunately is the closest picture that I have to her current age. Great Grandma Laulusa came to visit, and Valerie got to spend some fun time with her and the girls.

It is difficult for me to find the words to express how grateful I am for my wonderful wife, and though these pictures do not say everything I want to say I feel that they communicate to some degree the love I have for her.

Happy birthday, Love! And here's to many years of you whooping me in your new Star Trek Scene it! game.

It's been too long since my last post. Part of that is because work started back up to a 5-day work week so it's extra busy. The other part is that one night our computer just turned off by itself and didn't turn back on. $350 later we basically have a new computer.

I love technology, and I can't live without it. And I understand that new strides are being made in the computer industry every day which makes our computers run faster and more efficiently. But I think it's a little ridiculous that we had to buy a new motherboard, processor, hard drive, more ram, and possibly a power supply all because one thing in our computer broke. And because we had to buy that one thing, we had to buy all the other components because things had changed so much that the connections for everything was different and wouldn't work without the newer versions. Harumph.

We had a lot of fun at Myrtle Beach with Auntie Kimmi, Uncle Josh, Grandma Flute, and Grandpa. Here is a video of Lara in an airlift chair during our visit of SciWorks in North Carolina. We always try to visit a science center or zoo that is part of our reciprocal memberships. It gives us a driving break and it's fun!

We visited Broadway at the Beach on Tuesday evening especially to see the fireworks. I was excited to take Lara on the carousel but for some reason all she wanted to do was sit on the non-moving bench on said carousel. Boring. But we had fun eating ice cream and fudge, playing on the playground, finding 80% off sales (it was the end of the season so vendors just wanted their stuff gone), and watching fireworks.

Lara wanted to take this picture but there was a shop light shining on the cutouts and I couldn't get a really good shot. But this one of Vivi is really cute!

We loved seeing the different wildlife in South Carolina- lizards, frogs, snakes, fish, crabs, birds, etc.